Morning Meditation: Enemy Love

Dear God of Love and Justice,

This morning I hold before You the hardest command You ever gave — to love my enemies. Not tolerate them. Not avoid them. Love them. And I confess, Lord, that some faces come to mind immediately: the colleague who took credit for my work, the family member whose words still sting months later, the neighbor whose hostility I can feel through the walls.

But Psalm 24:1 reminds me that the earth is Yours, and everything in it — including the people I'd rather avoid. They bear Your image just as surely as I do. The same hands that shaped me shaped them. The same breath that filled my lungs fills theirs.

So teach me the kind of enemy love that Corrie ten Boom practiced when she extended her hand to the former concentration camp guard who stood before her after a speaking engagement in Munich. She had no strength for it — she prayed silently, moved her hand forward like a mechanical thing, and felt a current of warmth flood from her shoulder down her arm. Your love, not hers.